The solutions to this and other Transum puzzles, exercises and activities are available here when you are signed in to your Transum subscription account. If you do not yet have an account and you are a teacher or parent you can apply for one here.

A Transum subscription also gives you access to the 'Class Admin' student management system and opens up ad-free access to the Transum website for you and your pupils.

"We had a go and we got various answers. When we discussed the rules and the boundaries of the shapes we found that allowed more. We also concluded that squares are also rectangles. We are going with 232. But there is probably more."

Wonhang Lee, Korea

Friday, January 27, 2012

""There are forty-one rectangles."brown color 33 &yellow color 8."

Callum , Year 8, Carisbrooke, Isle Of Wight

Friday, May 4, 2012

"We have reached 206 rectangles of various sizes and there are still a few more!"

Spruce Class - Year 5, East Borough Primary , Kent

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

"We found 173 at most, but we are still looking! Does anyone have an accurate answer?"

Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for those learning Mathematics anywhere in the world.
Click here to enter your comments.

A mathematical investigation is quite different to other mathematical activities.
The best investigations are open ended and allow students to choose the way they
work and how they record their findings. It is one of the few occasions when
'going off on a tangent' is not only acceptable but actively encouraged (within
reason).

Students may ask for 'the answers' but this supposes that the activity is
closed. Investigations can always be extended by varying the initial
instructions or asking the question 'what if...?'. Sometimes students point out
that the instructions are ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways.
This is fine and the students are encouraged to explain how they interpreted the
instructions in their report.

Some students may benefit from a writing frame when producing the reports
of their investigations. Teachers may suggest sections or headings such as
Introduction, Interpretation, Research, Working and Conclusion or something
similar.

Here are some other activities you may be interested in:

Featured Activity

Strategy Games

We have collected together lots of strategy games for you to enjoy. Many of them have mathematical principles involved in their design so would make a good activity for a Mathematics lesson.

Recently Updated

Time Totals

Ten questions requiring a time calculation based on popular films. So far this activity has been accessed 7620 times and 244 people have earned a Transum Trophy for completing it.